This Is a Very Important Decision | with Show, Not Tell, What You Know

0:00You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact. GiveWell has spent the last 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation, and they direct funding to the highest impact opportunities.

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1:13To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from the Daily Stoic and you'll get your donation matched. That's GiveWell.org, code the Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. Look, if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably heard of HelloFresh, right? They're the number one meal kit in America. They make home cooking easier with chef-crafted recipes and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door. This fall, they're serving up even more to love. It's not the HelloFresh you remember.

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2:57Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

3:39This is a very important decision. Yes, Mark has really said you should not have to need to retreat to get away from it all. Yes, he said we're supposed to find something we love and wear ourselves down doing it. Yet he also seemed to know that this was unhealthy because in another spot in meditations, he says that in life, you can't be all about business. He knew that we needed balance in our lives, outlets for our stress and our passions, whether they were sports or hunting or journaling or taking walks outdoors. Even meditation or reflection was a way to do that, a way to reach utter stillness.

4:12As the actor Alexander Ludwig, who's in Vikings and The Hunger Games and Lone Survivor, he talked about this recently on the Daily Stoic podcast, which you should listen to if you haven't heard his episode. He said, sometimes the only way to not be all about business is to get away from it. Throughout the episode, Ludwig talked about how stoicism has helped him get and stay sober. In addition to stoicism, rehab, and the program, one of the best choices he made, he said, was leaving Los Angeles and moving to Austin, Texas. This is what he said. Like Lauren and I'm a wife, we've, we'd never been to Austin, you know, and I'd heard such amazing things.

4:44And once we got here, it was just like, oh man, like, I feel like this is how like life was back in the seventies, you know, you know, or like back before everything, it's just, you go to certain places, like even this town, I'm just like, are you kidding me? Like right over to a fucking bookstore? Like, this is incredible. Like, I love this. And you know, it's funny, Hollywood, I feel like creates the illusion of competition. Sure. Like social media. Yes. whereas in reality it's not as competitive as people make it out to be. There are roles that I am so right for and there will be a very few other guys my age, my type that are right for that.

5:21Like in that sense, I guess you could say we're competing against each other. But in reality, like it's not that. And I think that there's this feeling of totally perpetuated by insecurities of just, I have to one up, I have to act better, I have to be better. And it's just, that's not the father I want to be. That's not the husband I want to be. That's not the man I want to be. Notice how Ludwig kept saying, for me, for some, Los Angeles is the perfect place. For some, living in Hollywood and being steeped in the film industry is a dream. For some, being surrounded by the competition is great fuel.

5:54Ideally, we could be home anywhere. And sometimes in our lives, we have to be. But finding the place where you're the best version of yourself, which brings out stillness rather than frenzy, virtue rather than vice, it's an important decision. That's why I live here in Texas. It's not a perfect place. I don't love everything about it, but it was better for me, healthier for me than how I was living in California or New York or other places. So life's too short to live somewhere you don't want to live if you don't have to. So that's the message of today's podcast. And do listen to Alexander's wonderful episode on the Daily Stoic Podcast.

6:31If you missed it, I'll link to it in today's show notes.

6:42Hey, it's Ryan. Today's episode is from the Daily Stoic, May 3rd show, not tell what you know. I'm holding the Daily Stoic 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. it's probably annoying that I'm always saying the title, but you know what? Every time we post about this book on Instagram, people go, oh, what book is that? As if it's not the book that kicked off the whole thing. So, I try to take the humility in remembering that even though I have lived and breathed this book and these ideas for a very long time, they're new to many people and maybe they're even new to you listening right now.

7:23So, you can grab the book, audiobook, physical, We have a cool leather edition. And I read one of the entries every Friday as part of the podcast. And so I'm going to bring you this entry, which starts with a quote from Epictetus' Discourses. He says, those who receive the bare theories immediately want to spew them as an upset stomach does its food. First, digest your theories and you won't throw them up, he says. Otherwise, they will be raw and spoiled and not nourishing. After you've digested them, show us the changes in your reasoned choices, just like the soldiers of gymnasts display their diet and training, and as the craft of artisans show what they've learned.

8:06Many of the stoic aphorisms are simple to remember and even sound smart when quoted, but that's not what philosophy is really about. The goal is to turn these words into works. As Musonius Rufus, that was Epictetus's teacher, As he put it, the justification for philosopher is when one brings together sound teachings, sound conduct. Today or any time when you catch yourself wanting to condescendingly drop some knowledge that you have, Crabben asked, would I be better saying the words or letting my actions and choices illustrate that knowledge for me? So a couple thoughts here as we kick this around.

8:46Number one, I think Musonius Rufus was a guy who walked the walk in addition to talking the talk. This is a guy, first off, who teaches Epictetus. I mean, he's a philosophy teacher. He's known as the Roman Socrates, a wise, powerful, important dude. And here he is teaching a slave. No discrimination, no judgment. In fact, he makes Epictetus into his greatest student. And he also teaches women. He was very ahead of his time and writes this fascinating essay about how women are just as capable of virtue as men. and should be taught philosophy and excellence. But Mussonius Rufus is exiled four times, three we know for certain, four we speculate about, but he deals with injustice, he deals with difficulty, he deals with adversity.

9:33All these things he talks about, he has to put into practice. Epictetus, of course, we know this without question. But what I sort of think about when I think about this quote. Actually, I want to go back to something for a second too. You know, I said that they called him the Roman Socrates. We've talked about this before, but Socrates doesn't write anything down. What he left behind was his example, right? His example is so compelling that it makes for great writing by Plato. But Socrates is a philosopher because of how he lived, because of what he did in the room in conversations with people, not what he, not poring over his notebooks and writing and rewriting and all of that.

10:17He was a philosopher because of how he lived. And in fact, the great Stoic Cato gives us a similar example. Epictetus himself was a teacher, yes, but he doesn't write any books. It's what he told his students and how he lived that survives down to us into a form of lecture notes. That's what Marcus Aurelius reads, And that's what we have now in discourses and in Caridian. But I just think about this with my own understanding of Stoicism. So I read Mark Spillis in my late teens, 18, 20 years old, and I start writing about it immediately. I was immediately regurgitating it out because it was the smartest, most interesting, thought-provoking, challenging, eye-opening stuff I'd ever read.

11:01But it took many, many years for the ideas to firmly take hold. Epictetus talks about, or Seneca talks about, ideas winning firm hold in your mind. Now, the brilliance of the writing and the phrasing and the humor and the wisdom, all that immediately hits me. I get that immediately, but it takes a lot longer for it to worm its way into my DNA, into my life. I talk about this in the afterword of the justice book that I'm doing now. And I I talk about this in Right Thing right now, the third book in the Virtue series, The Justice Book, which is coming out in June. You can pre-order that now everywhere, of course.

11:46But I don't think I could have written that book in my 20s. I don't even know if I could have written it in my early 30s. I don't even know if I could have written it three years ago, right? It took a long time. It took hard-won experiences. it took the, that's the thing about stoicism, I guess, is one of the things I say in the afterward is it's working on you as you are working on it. And what Epictetus is saying and what ultimately the Stoics want you to understand is that studying stoicism, talking about stoicism, thinking about stoicism, reading about stoicism, all this stuff is great. It's part of it.

12:24But first off, it's going to take time and patience. And second, it's going to take work to turn those words into works, which is the whole point of the philosophy. It's supposed to translate down to the conduct. So interesting quotes, remarks, really about temper or about anxiety. Those hit me at 20, but it took a long time, maybe longer than it should have, but it took me a while to actually start applying that stuff, to start acting differently, to let it really get into my system. And so I would just, if you feel like you've been studying this stuff and talking about it and thinking about it for a while and it's just, you don't know if there's a difference yet, give it time.

13:03You know, it's working on you as you are working on it. And at the same time, I would say keep working on it, right? Actually actively try to get it in there. I remember when I was doing jujitsu, I went one time I was working out at a Brazilian jujitsu gym in New York City and the professor said something like, you got to come every day with something specific you're trying to work on, something specific you want to take out of it. I think if we think of stoicism that way too, what am I trying to get out of this? What am I really working on? What am I trying to translate into conduct today? I'm not trying to reinvent myself, change everything, but I'm trying to really get it into my system.

13:45And I want to try to act and behave differently as a result of what I'm learning here. That's what we're doing. That's what Epictetus is talking about. That's today's message. Have a good weekend. I'll talk to you soon.

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